Category: Howdy

If you don’t remember seeing me much during our senior year, it is because I spent half-days that year taking college classes.  I finished my BA at the University of Iowa (Education) following it up with an MA (English).  In January 1977 I headed to the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) to study 18^th Century English Literature.  Those plans got sidetracked when I met Mark Miller and we decided to get married.  After three years living at an Army base in Carlisle, Pennsylvania we moved to New York’s Capital District (the Albany area) where we lived for 35 years.

I spent most of my career at the New York Department of Public Service, regulating utilities.  Over the years I had opportunities to work on a wide range of issues including rates, customer service, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.  I took advantage of an early retirement offer in 2010. Initially, after retiring I consulted on energy issues about ½ time.  As the years have passed, I have cut this back to doing training on behalf of the State Department in developing countries, including Jordan, Rwanda, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Zambia, Colombia, and Angola.

Many of you remember my dad, Ed Barker, our principal.  He lived to be 91 and passed away just before COVID hit.  The highlight of his career was getting things underway at West High, taking it from a blueprint to a functioning institution.  He always spoke fondly about his years working there.   My mom and brothers still live in Iowa City and my sister lives in Woodstock, New York.

Mark and I are still married after 45 years together and enjoy the year-round entertainment opportunities of central Florida.  We have two children and two grandsons (both are 4 years old).    Our son, Eric, lives in New Jersey and does economic analysis for Prudential.  Our daughter, Katie, lives on the other coast, in Tacoma, Washington, where she teaches math in a private school.  Given how spread out we are it is rare for all of us to be together at the same time, so we are glad that we will have a chance to meet up in California this July.  

I am looking forward to seeing many of you at the reunion.

Alice (Barker) Miller

Hi Everyone

A big hello from me to you all. Here’s a bit about what I’m up to…

I am married to an English guy l met in my home country Ghana, and we have lived in England since 1985 and have two grown up sons.

I have also written two cook books in the last ten years, ‘A Plate in the Sun’ with modern fusion recipes and ‘A Date with Plantain’ with 51 ways with plantain, my favourite vegetable and probably the vegetable world’s best kept secret. I am a creative fusion chef/demonstrator and work at the Novelli Academy cookery school with a French Michelin star chef called Jean Christophe Novelli, where I am Front of House and run a course titled A Taste of Africa. I also demonstrate at food festivals, in schools, in people’s homes and on TV. I also host our local BBC radio from time to time and run Spice Workshops

I must say, l have an amazing time doing it all, especially as I didn’t plan any of it, but I’ve been told that ‘Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making plans’. 

If you’d like to see some of what l do, I’m on Instagram as – pattismenu. I have also written my very first poem, celebrating Maya Angelou, who totally inspires me. You will find my poem on my website www.pattismenu.com

I wish you all a very happy reunion. Also if any of you are ever in London and would like to meet up, it would be wonderful to see you.

My best wishes

Patti xx

Some Fun Photos of Patti

Some Foodie Photos from Patti

Howdy from the rolling hills of beautiful northeast Iowa! Doesn’t seem that long ago that we were fresh faced teenagers ready to go out and make our mark on the world. Steve and I started dating in high school and married in December of 1973. He had enlisted in the Air Force and being young and in love we couldn’t fathom being apart. Our son, Tyson, was born in Tacoma, Washington and our daughter, Alyssa, was born in Colorado Springs. We returned to Iowa in 1979 and settled in North Liberty to raise our family. 

In 1994 we purchased 73 acres of mostly timber in Clayton County, Iowa and Steve had his own happy hunting ground. Also on the property was an abandoned 4 square farmhouse that we decided to restore. In 1998 with our kids grown and on their own we headed north. We were looking for a kinder, gentler America and we certainly found it here. We could possibly be the only county left in Iowa in 2023 that still has no red/yellow/green stoplights and not a single fast food restaurant. 

I left my job at the College of Dentistry and went to work at a rural medical clinic in Strawberry Point. Steve continued on as a ceramic tile contractor. When the medical clinic closed in 2004 I accepted a position at the Clayton County Courthouse in Elkader as a Deputy Recorder. I remained in this position until my retirement in January of 2022.

 Retirement soon looked different than what I had envisioned when I lost Steve 3 months later. He had retired at 60 due to health reasons and endured 2 open heart surgeries before losing his battle with heart disease. I miss him everyday but have learned that I am a lot stronger than I ever would have believed. Our daughter and her husband now reside in West Virginia and our son and his wife are nearby in Elkader. They each blessed us with 2 grandchildren. The older 3 are now adults and the youngest will be a junior in high school. Friday nights in the fall are spent under the lights watching him play football. I manage to keep busy with my needlework projects, my obsession with doll collecting, DIY home improvement projects, visiting family and friends, and coffee or drinks with the neighbors. I also sub at Central Community School in Elkader which is a far cry from West High. It encompasses 1 city block and houses Pre-K through 12th grade. The average graduating class is 35 seniors. I love small town life! 

Last October I went on a retirement trip with my dear friends,Karen Villhauer Michalec and Diane Rhoades Meyer (Regina 1973)to Cabo where we had a week of fun in the sun and more than our share of fruity drinks! My favorite place to be will always be with my toes in the sand with a beach view. I’m hoping there will be more beaches in my future!         

Overall, I would say life has been good. I feel content, blessed, and most of all, happy. Wishing you all the same.

Sorry, I won’t make to our 50^th anniversary reunion due to some international travel plans.  However, here is the story of what I have been up to during these 50 years.

After graduation I enrolled in the Univ. of Iowa Electrical Engineering program with my best friend Rich Altmaier.  We took almost all the same classes.  We had taken first-year calculus by commuting to the UI math department while still at West High, so our college advisor dropped us in the deep end of the pool, assigning us both Thermodynamics and Electromagnetic Field Theory our very first full-time semester.  Both of those courses assumed you already knew 2^nd-year calculus, which we were just starting class for, so it was quite challenging.  Later, we were given post-graduate (5^th-year) versions of Communications Systems and Control Systems by our third year.  Rich and I were the only ones there that weren’t prepared by the undergraduate versions of these courses, which we skipped over.  In spite of these challenges, and in my case the distraction of imbibing beer with my Engineering Fraternity mates, I managed to do acceptably academically.  Rich skipped the beer and did better yet..

After high school, in order to get more freedom, I moved out of my mother’s home into a local apartment with Tim Thomas (our friend from West High), Phil Altmaier (one of Rich’s younger brothers), and another guy.  The next year, five of us from my Engineering fraternity rented a house together.  Sometime after graduation from college, I helped found the local fraternity housing corporation that eventually purchased a house and I served on the fraternity’s national board of directors for a few terms.

After we graduated (in just three years) Rich went on to post-graduate studies at Stanford in California and I went directly to work at Motorola in the Chicago suburbs.  For several months I was too young to drink regular beer or hard liquor in Illinois, even though I had a college degree and a full-time job.

At Motorola, I designed a modem for a base station for two-way radios and walkie-talkies used by first responders and taxicabs.  It had a Motorola 6800  8-bit microcontroller chip and a bunch of analog circuitry.  What today we would call the BIOS had to fit in 256 bytes.  I helped install an antenna for the first such base station on the roof of the Sears Tower, which at the time was the tallest building in the world.  Our team was about a dozen engineers in a large room.  Next door was a similar room with another dozen engineers.  They were the entire worldwide cell phone industry at that time, and invented the AMPS cell phone system and the first handsets.  

I didn’t much care for living in Chicago and so after a couple of years I moved back to Iowa and got a job at what was then Rockwell-Collins in Cedar Rapids (now Raytheon Aerospace) where I designed automatic pilots for jets.  That advanced control theory course came in useful, after all.  I seem to recall both Rich and I got an A+ in that class even though everyone else but us already had their undergraduate degree. It certainly paid off in this job for me, though the way Rich’s career evolved this particular course probably didn’t help him as much as me.

Autopilot work was a lot of fun.  I did a lot of flight testing in Collins’ SabreLiner business jet flying out of the Cedar Rapids airport, in addition to analysis and design back in the office.  We even had a big (room-sized) analog computer that I programmed with patch cables.  There were a few exciting moments, like when I started an electrical fire on board the SabreLiner (not good!) and had to stay up late to fix it since there was a big customer demo flight the next morning.  Or, when flying in a prototype Falcon 50 jet over southern France – the most aesthetically pleasing business jet still to this day and one of the only ones with three engines – we pulled over three g’s.  I suggested to the French test pilot he disengage the autopilot but he wanted to let it run and see what was going to happen.  I was hoping that wouldn’t be the wings popping all their rivets and ripping off.  He and the copilot had ejection seats, and I did not.  All I had was astronaut insurance (since these airplanes were uncertified), and no heirs.  That was the last of the analog autopilots (and analog computers, for that matter).  Then I designed the first digital autopilot used in general aviation using an Intel 16-bit 8086 at its core.  This is before Intel introduced the 8088 which was later used in the first IBM personal computers.  Meanwhile, Rich was working at Intel on the 8087 floating-point coprocessor companion chip.  It was very advanced for its time and did around 50,000 floating-point operations per second (FLOPS), but it wasn’t available in time for my project.

Coming out is something you do your whole life… friends, parents, co-workers, and so on.  But first, is oneself. This brings me to 1980 and I am 24 years old.  That year I decided I like boys more than girls.  I am not sure why it took me so long.  Maybe everyone knew I was gay except me (and Mom seemed taken off-guard, too).  So, I stopped dating girls and about a year later I moved with my first serious boyfriend to California.  I was lucky not to have too much homophobia in my family or at work, except for one uncle from whom I became estranged.

At my first job in California, I designed gyroscopes and accelerometers for roughly fifteen years.  I ran for US Congress as a Libertarian and was, as was expected, soundly defeated by the incumbent Democrat.  I was vice-chair of the California Libertarian Party for quite a few years.  I got my first US patent during that time, of which I now have roughly 20.  I did a lot of digital signal processing design, which was still pretty new.  Thus, that advanced communications systems course came in useful, too, along with even more control systems stuff but more and more digitally based.  After roughly four years together I broke up with my boyfriend.

In 1985 I was introduced to Ben, and we hit it off right away. By the end of the year I had moved in with him. We stayed together 33 years until his death in 2018 from congestive heart failure at the age of 70. In 2004 we were “married” along with around 4000 other couples in San Francisco city hall during the famous (notorious?) Valentine’s Day weekend same-sex wedding ceremonies that were arranged by then-mayor (now governor) Gavin Newsom. These marriages were annulled by the courts. In 2008 the California legislature passed the same-sex marriage act, and we were married (for real) less than one week before the Briggs initiative passed and revoked that law, but the 18,000 California same-sex marriages performed before the referendum passed were still valid. Eventually, the US Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal in every state, overriding the Briggs initiative.

A lot of people were dying of AIDS, including several of our friends and tenants.  Nearly 50% of the gay men in our age group perished.  In 1992 we suffered a catastrophe when an apartment building we owned on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco was demolished due to a mudslide.  This was front-page news for many days.  Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall filmed “Dark Passages” in that building.

As part of the design of the accelerometers and gyroscopes I architected and led the design of a couple dozen integrated circuits, both analog and digital. In the verification process we used a new type of device, just invented, called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to emulate our custom digital circuits. FPGAs would dominate the rest of my professional life. For the next fifteen years I worked at a small company called Aptix where I was a hired gun rented out as a consultant to engineering companies that wanted to use FPGAs (resold by Aptix) to emulate their own custom integrated circuits. I traveled the world, and worked in short periods in probably 30 industrially-advanced countries from Japan to France. My longest stint was about six months in Erlangen Germany where I worked on the receiver chip for XM Radio (before the merger with Sirius). I worked on cordless phones (remember them?) in The Netherlands and at Bell Labs’ famous facility in New Jersey. I worked on numerous “3G” cell phone chips at several companies, and on HD radio at Lucent. I worked on a satellite-based router for almost six months at what was TRW in Southern California, commuting there every Monday and back to Northern California on Friday. I had a similar long-term gig commuting to Salt Lake City.

Aptix ended badly when the CEO was convicted of perjury (and other crimes) in a patent dispute and received a 13-year prison sentence.  The company promptly went bankrupt.  I was quite literally the last employee.  I shut down the email servers (since I also managed the IT department) and turned out the lights for the last time.  Then, I was unemployed for the first and only time in my life.

In 2007 I ended up at Actel, a company that makes FPGAs.  Actel was bought by Microsemi which was bought by Microchip Technology, where I still work in the FPGA business unit (now 15+ years) architecting the security features of our FPGAs.  Microchip has over 20,000 employees and is the third-largest supplier of microcontrollers worldwide, the third-largest supplier of FPGAs, and the number-one supplier of semiconductors to the US Department of Defense.  I transitioned from being a user of FPGAs to being a designer of them. My title is “Associate Technical Fellow.”  I am pretty well known in the small world of semiconductor security, and sometimes speak at technical conferences.

I was present at the start of the RISC-V Foundation (now RISC-V International) which is defining a new computer instruction set “to rule them all”.  Our latest FPGAs have multiple RISC-V CPUs in them and can perform more than a trillion floating-point operations per second.  I am chairman of the RISC-V Cryptographic Extensions Task Group.  I expect Microchip Technology will be my last professional job and expect to retire in a few years.

G. Richard Newell

P.S.: Yes, I think that is a pocket slide rule in my “candid photo” in the 1973 YouTube class photo carousel. 😊 My slide rule collection now has over 100 examples, some quite rare. About the only place you can get a new one is on a watch since nearly every other form of the slide rule vanished from production very suddenly around 1974 when the electronic calculator replaced it.

After receiving my degree from the University of Iowa, I did what any new MBA degree-holder would do: join the Peace Corps? Assigned to the Philippines, the experience was so enjoyable that it began a career in international development.

Looking back 50 years, my most fun job accomplishment was the 1988 introduction of computerization to a US-based nongovernmental organization in Manila, and helping to train 100+ Filipino staff having no previous computer experience. Astounded by the improved productivity, they were also happy to learn new job skills.

Years later, a State Department position had me writing agreements to fund US government agencies providing international development training/mentoring to countries world-wide. This led to federal and contractor work over nearly 20 years, requiring coordination with and travel to branch offices in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, ending with retirement last year.

During those 50 years, two Filipino-American sons (Kyle and Luke) were born in the Philippines and relocated to a new life in Northern Virginia (NoVa). They began learning tennis at ages 5 and 3, respectively, with Luke playing on his university team, and both continuing to teach the game as adults, to NoVa tennis enthusiasts.

I began lap swimming nearly 40 years ago. Now living in a Mexican paradise, I swim in the Pacific off of a beautiful Oaxaca beach where cruise ships dock, providing multiple health benefits and, occasionally, a mouthful of saltwater. This is an effort to keep up with my father, who just turned ninety-nine years old.

During walks with my two adopted stray dogs (Valentino and Ranchero) through a forested national park in town, we usually meet a particularly curious wild deer, who likes to approach and cover Valentino with kisses. Though it’s hard to predict the future of this relationship, it occurred to me that it may be the closest I have come to grandfatherhood.

Though I wish I had prioritized Mrs. Ringo’s Spanish classes, I have found my tribe, and life in Mexico is good.

I think in the 10th grade our English teacher asked the class what do you want to do when you grow up?   Most people didn’t have an answer.  I answered “I want to build computers”.   Well, my career has been really blessed with my being a part of 10 industrial computer system designs from the ground up!  Most of these projects were with SGI/Silicon Graphics, where I went from engineering manager to VP of Engineering. 

I am most proud of 3 of these systems, not well known outside of research and academia, the SGI Challenge, Origin, and Altix. 

As an engineer, one knows that most of ones work decays very rapidly, and is soon scrapped.  However I was privileged to be the decision maker and leader of the team which put the operating system called Linux onto the first server, the SGI Altix.  I will claim my team drove Linux from a single processor desktop OS to a server OS, which is now dominate in the world of servers!  This accomplishment will stand for some decades. 

I ended my career at Intel Corporation, where I actually started out of college, and met my spouse Paulette, now 41 years married.  My last project at Intel was to be my 11th computer system, however we both decided to retire while we were still in good health and could travel.  

We raised our family in California, but now both daughters work in the DC area, so we have followed and settled in Virginia, to be near them.  

In retirement I have found two new entertainments, dessert baking, and 3D print designs.  You can see some of my work in baking here: https://food52.com/users/1351210-rich-altmaier/recipes

And some of my 3D designs here:  https://www.thingiverse.com/richalt2/designs

Both of these are keeping my brain active!

As many of you know, Janelle Gibson and I married the year after graduation, and have been on an adventure ever since. Janelle supported me through college and I joined the Air Force as an officer upon graduation. We endured a posting in North Dakota and it’s winters, but then enjoyed two three year tours in England, four years in California, and a couple years in Morocco.

After a break working in Midwest manufacturing, I reentered the Air Force, working locally in the Des Moines area. After all our travels, Janelle was finally able to finish college and graduated with an elementary education degree, then taught in West Des Moines, Iowa. She then worked in the travel industry and enjoyed a job where she travelled the world literally, and led groups for business and pleasure trips.

I retired from the Air Force finally in 2007 with the rank of Colonel, and then went to work in the aerospace industry for Bombardier Learjet, both in Wichita and Montreal. I worked on flight testing, both on existing planes and certifying new ones. In 2016, I retired forever, but continue with a hobby job, driving a school bus for West Des Moines.

Janelle retired from the travel business in 2020, and now stays very busy with volunteer work, fitness, and grandchildren.

We have four grown children with lovely spouses and six grandchildren. They’re all doing well, and live in Missoula, MT, Mclean, VA, Chicago, and Waukee, Iowa.

Here is a photo from our youngest daughter, Meg’s wedding recently. After Janelle and I, left to right are Megan, Lizabeth, Peter and Nate.

And us with all the grandkids reading Christmas Eve stories in 2021.

Howdy Classmates,

In 1977 I married a guy (Jim Bradley) from the “wrong” side of town (City High) and we’ve been married for 46 years. During our first 10 years of marriage we lived in Houston, Minneapolis, the Davenport area and landed back in Iowa City in 1986.

We have two grown kids, Jessica (42) and Adam (38). Adam and his wife live in Reno, NV and both work in healthcare. Jessica’s family lives in MInneapolis with our three grandkids (Evie, Willa and Howie) where she works for General Mills in their marketing division.

I retired from The University of Iowa in 2019 after a total of about 20 years, the majority of the time spent in the Office of the Provost. I took a break from University employment from 1997-2007 and started a career in real estate with Coldwell Banker in Iowa City which I really enjoyed. Since I wanted to work towards a secure retirement, I returned to the University in 2007.

Since JIm’s retirement in 2020 after 35 years at the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy, we’ve been spending our winters in the south (Arizona and Texas). It is nice to get away from the cold but we don’t have any plans of moving south permanently. We have to stay close to the grandkids.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone this summer!

Brenda (Schrock) Bradley

Howdy Class of  ’73

I have posted off and on in the past but I just thought I would put out there a quick synopsis of my past 50 years.  It is hard to believe that nearly 50 years has passed since many of us have crossed paths.  This may well be the last chance that some of us will be able to meet, talk and brag of our lives.

   After high school I went to a Tech for two years and got an AA.  I worked in that field for several years then  Julie and I married in ’76 and have remained together  This summer will be 47 years with many more to come.  We put Julie through nursing school and when she was finished I returned to the UofI and completed my BA in Math with a minor in CS.  I was also told that I could get a  minor in American Literature  if I would take Chauser or Shakespeare.  Not bad considering I pretty much hated high school English. When I graduated I was offered numerous jobs and landed in Ft.Lauderdale.  We were there for 32 years until retiring to Ocala

   During my working career I was a teacher, Department Chair, Athletic Director with many small jobs sprinkled in. I took classes  in the summers at Brown, Princeton, UCLA, FAU  and  Broward College.  I have enough credits for a Masters but never focused on one area.  It was more fun and interesting to take courses that I wanted. . Along the way I received certifications from MicroSoft, Oracle and Cisco.

   We have two sons Ben and Quin.  Ben is an engineer with the FDOT in DC.  Married to a wonderful lady, Ally, who is a senior editor for CBS news. Quin works IT for Hilton hotels, we get great deals on hotel rooms. He and his significant other, Riane, live in Orlando.  Neither have kids and have chosen to make that decision permanent.  We do have , as Julie likes to say, 1 grand dog, 6 grand cats, 4 grand chickens and many grand fish.

   We have traveled a lot.  We have visited 46 states and 17 different countries.  We plan on one more trip to Europe some time, probably around our 50^th anniversary.  They stories and experiences are many and wonderful with very few disappointments.

   Retirement has been wonderful.  We bought a house gutted and renovated it, got a new dog and relaxed.  We both walked away from our careers and have never looked back.  As with most people, probably, miss some of of our cohorts from work ,but not the work.  I did work part time for a couple of years but was fired for taking to many vacations.  Now we play golf 2-3 times a week along with other social activities.

    Mine and Julie’s families still live in or around IC.    My mom will probably die in her house on 8^th ave. We get back every few years for visits or special events.  I miss the friendliness of the midwest but not the weather.  I will take hot and humid over snow and below zero temps any year.

  Well until we meet again

HI EVERYONE

my years since 1973

I followed my shoe repair career 20 years, then bought my own shop in 1988. With my photography, I was able to host my own website and was amazed at how much it helped a small business like mine. Shoes came in from all US and MORE! Birkenstock sandals and hi end men’s shoes.

I have spent many years dealing with Kidney disease, 2 transplants included. I donated many years to kidney studies (guinea pig testing/ new drugs) or FDA  mandated studies. $$$(!!!)

Met Anne in 1975 and we got hitched

48 years ago. Our 2 sons are mature men now.  Rob, oldest, (3 daughters) has risen thru the ranks of FoxSports as a cameraman. *think world series or super bowls…our Twin Cities is a good place to be based from.

Youngest Son Andrew followed journalism and later a stringer  photo journalist,( including the George Floyd aftermath, trials, etc.

 along with many years in grocery store business.  He is now employed at Minneapolis regional Airport,  and now is dating a Florida gal* his job at airport helps his budget to travel to Tallahasse.

I ( we, my wife was integral part) Retired as cobbler in 2022, 53 years, and am have spent most of retirement as a skin cancer patient.

 April of 2022 I retired, closed my shop, and we moved from a residence of 38 years, to an apartment. 

I could miss our 50th class reunion. 

I enjoyed taking and posting photos of previous years reunions! Thanks for Bonnie Tappen Weldon’s hospitality over the years also.

My wife is a good singer, and I played the organ and piano for our church most of the years we’ve been married.

I am the million dollar man, health wise. I am Very thankful for the advancements in the medical community,  which have extended my life. I also was fortunate  to have financial assistance due to my kidney health. My wife Anne is helping me thru this time of Healthcare challenges. 

Major skin cancer surgery, radiation therapy, and now immune therapy. 

Never knew the value of a daily rest/nap until now, due to many sleepless nights. 

An art studio owner took over my shoe shop location  and had a photo display of my shoe repair business which was located there for 33 years. .

Longevity has been part of my family, so I should still be around for another 15 years, at least.

Gene

Photo from 5 years ago